Citation: Abdullah, A.; Ababio-Donkor, A.; Adams, C.A. Gender Disparities in the Access and Use of Urban Public Transport in Abuja, Nigeria. Sustainability 2022, 14, 5219. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14095219 Academic Editor: Aoife Ahern Received: 27 February 2022 Accepted: 22 April 2022 Published: 26 April 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Gender Disparities in the Access and Use of Urban Public Transport in Abuja, Nigeria Amatullah Abdullah 1 , Augustus Ababio-Donkor 2, * and Charles Anum Adams 2, * 1 Federal Ministry of Works and Housing Abuja, Kado 900108, Nigeria; abdallahamatullah00@gmail.com 2 Regional Transport Research and Education Centre Kumasi, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana * Correspondence: aadonor@knust.edu.gh (A.A.-D.); caadams.coe@knust.edu.gh (C.A.A.) Abstract: In Nigerian cities, many different urban mass transit modes convey people from one point to another. However, each gender faces unique challenges and has different experiences of accessing and using public transport systems in metropolitan cities such as Abuja, especially with its growing increase in infrastructural development and its being the seat of government. Most studies of urban mobility have been undertaken in developed countries; there is little evidence on this subject in developing countries such as Nigeria. This paper aims to assess gender disparities in the access and use of urban public transport in Abuja, Nigeria. This research explored individual experiences and challenges in accessing and using public transport services and making recommendations for improvements. A mixed design approach was used to collect primary data comprising qualitative and quantitative data to achieve the research goal. Qualitative data were collected by conducting a focus group discussion which aided the researcher in gathering the overall perceptions of public transport commuters in terms of structure, experience, and challenges, and was subsequently used in designing a questionnaire for the quantitative data. This research sought to fill a gap in knowledge of gender disparities in public transport use in Abuja, Nigeria, by looking into the structure of the public transport system and how it affects men and women differently. The research findings revealed that females use more public transport services than males, that demographic characteristics affected respondents’ choices of public transport use, and that trip-related characteristics played a vital role in their use of public transport. It further revealed that men are generally more satisfied and face fewer challenges than women in accessing and using public transport services. There is, therefore, a need to improve the system to cater for the different mobility needs of women and to develop policies and frameworks to regulate the delivery of public transport services in Nigeria. Keywords: gender disparities; public transport; travel patterns; accessibility; transport challenges 1. Introduction In the 1990s, it became widely known that women and men have significantly different demand patterns for transportation services and that transportation sector interventions typically did not adequately address women’s demands. The scope of the challenge and prospects were discussed in the context of poverty reduction and the relevance of gender equality [1]. Gender is commonly identified as a key explanatory factor for travel behaviour; since women’s role in societal structure has changed in the past few decades, the question arises as to whether the “gender” factor still plays a decisive role in differences in mobility within the working population [2]. It is well known that travel behaviour is gendered. While there are differences in public transportation access between places, they all have one thing in common: women’s travel patterns differ from those of men [3]. Generally, women travel shorter distances but spend more time travelling than males [4]. Since they make more non-work-related journeys, women make more and more complex trips than men. Women’s journeys are often of longer durations than men’s due to the prevalence of trip Sustainability 2022, 14, 5219. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095219 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability